no-floppy system configuration

Many new laptops come without a floppy drive; the one that I just
bought, an Acer Aspire 2003LMi, does not have one - it's available as an
extra option, but I don't see myself needing it. However, part of my
standard method for converting Win-machines to dual-boot involves using
FIPS, which I use to "shrink" the Wind0ws partition to a minimal size -
and FIPS normally runs from a floppy. What to do?

Here's an interesting fact that many people may not be aware of: the
bootable part of a CD consists of nothing more than a bootable floppy
image. So, I simply took a DOS boot floppy containing FIPS, and made a
byte-by-byte copy:

I then created an ISO image containing that disk copy. If I wanted any
other data on that CD (I'll probably make another one with a bunch of
DOS utilities on it later; I've been using bootable DOS "tool" floppies
for over 20 years to repair broken Wind0ws systems), I'd copy that data
into "/tmp/cdrom", and it would become part of that image.

The only downside to this is not being able to save the boot sector to
the floppy before repartitioning... but in the worst case, it's a new
system without any of my data on it, and it's not a concern. Besides, I
have Linux, and boot sector recovery is rather trivial.

Nice value in XFree86 startup

Hi,
first of all, sorry for my english, I try my best, but I use to fail in
spelling and grammar
Well, I'm writting to you because I have a problem at Xfree86's startup. I'm
useing kernel 2.4, so I have, in Xwrapper.config, nice value set to -10
("nice_value=-10"), but when entering "startx", just before entering
Xfree86, a message is shown: "warning: process set to nice value -11 instead
of -10 as requested". If I then change nice value to -11, then the startx
script changes nice value to -12. If I change it to -12, it changes it to
-13, and so on for any number between [-20, 19]. I've searched for many days
(weeks, in fact) on the web and asked at #debian, but no answers. I hope you
can lend me a hand. Btw, XFree86 runs perfectly ok, it's just that I hate
having error messages.
Thanx a lot for your help!

[Thomas]
By my knowledge of how X starts up it is not startx which is changing
this. Just out of curiosity, run (as root):

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-common

to see if that fixes anything. I have grepped through the startup files
that I use (I am running debian unstable) and there is nothing besides the
value in /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config which sets or changes the nice value of
X.

As a long shot (and possibly a complete aside) you don't have the "and"
package installed, do you?

Miller-Daemon

[Jason]
What you seem to be asking is "why am I getting messages from Mailer-Daemon"?
A message from "Mailer-Daemon" is probably the MTA (Mail transport agent: The
software that delivers mail.) sending a message that says, in effect, "excuse
me, but you seem to be confused. There is no such mailbox here."

claim no such addresses exist, etc.,

[Jason]
The automated message you're recieving means just what it says: No such
address exists. For example, if you try to send email to bob@example.com, and
there is no user bob at example.com, you're probably going to get a bounce
message that says no such address exists.

yet they cannot be questioned or challenged ever when they are wrong. Help.

[Jason]
The reason "they" cannot be questioned is because you're getting an automated
message: It was not send by a human.

Nobody would know better whether an address exists than the system you're
sending mail to, so I would say that the system you're sending mail to is
right and you are wrong.

what is "no"? (missing prog for binutils compile)

Now -- it's an unbearable situation that my Linux doesn't know "no".... But
I've no idea what it is and you can imagine that a google for "no" even with
linux and some other keywords around are not very helpful.

... so "no" could just be an alias or script that calls /usr/bin/yes
with the "no" argument:

/usr/bin/yes no

I realize this sounds silly and stupid, and April 1st is long past for
this year. But I'm not kidding. That Makefile (or whatever) seems to
actually want to pipe an endless stream of "n" or "no" lines into some
other process. (/usr/bin/yes was traditionally used in a pipeline with
fsck to automate the process of repairing a filesystem that need lots
of work -- then they just added the -y option to the GNU/Linux versions
of fsck.

I put the question up with bugreports for binutils and got:

[Alan]

> /bin/sh: no: command not found

This is a result of binutils being stuck on using old buggy autoconf.
Install a new version of GNU gettext, or configure with --disable-nls.

unfortunately with a new gettext (gettext-0.12.1.tar.gz) and nls enabled I
get a linker error for some gettext symbol. The solution without nls works
for getting binutils compiled. I try that on the 2.5.70 kernel sometime soon.

Does anybody know of a backport to 2.4.X of the preempt patch and or the I/O
scheme patches mentioned on kerneltrap right now? I'm not yet sure what else
will break if I switch to 2.5.X. At least NVdriver, lt_serial+lt_modem and
vmware kernel modules would be nice to have.

What is Linux Torvalds wife famous for

[Ashwin]
She is also famous for being Finland's champion in kung-fu or some similar
martial art

Linus was interviewed in Issue 67 of Linux Journal, by Marjorie
Richardson at the Linux World Expo of that year. Tove was 6 years
running, the Finnish champion for karate, specializing in precise Kata
(the forms), then moved on to other interests.
-- Heather

pppd problem

I use kppp under linux to dial-up my isp. but there is a strange problem
happens with me. when I dial-up from windows98 it connects with the isp at
the very first attempt. but under Linux (debian woody) kppp takes at-least
3/4 attempts to connect the isp, and during the failure it shows *pppd can't
be started * . I have also started pppd from root manually at the time of
hooking, but the result is same. could some one please suggest me how to fix
the problem ?

thanks in advanced.

[Thomas]
You need to ensure that you have a ppp-chat script enabled which is used
by pppd to comminicate with the modem to send certain signals, etc.

wvdial will help for this

PPP & ETH won't work concurrently

I'm running red hat 9 with an ethernet card to a LAN and a modem for dial up. I'm using kppp for the dial up. When the eth0 int is active, kppp will establish a connection but DNS fails. The DNS listed for both interfaces is the dialup one, but I can't resolve names unless the eth0 is shutdown. How can I , an ordinary joe get these things to work at the same time ?

thanks,
cj

[Thomas]
There is either a really easy or hard explanation. I think I am right in
saying that you need to have a correct entry in your routing table to use
the two concurrently, since the routing will not know.

As far as DNS goes, do you have a valid entry in /etc/resolv.conf and also
an entry in /etc/nsswitch.conf:

hosts: files dns

like that? If not, add the "dns" after the word "files".

[K.-H.]
Well kppp (or pppd which kppp calls) refuses to setup a default route if
one already exists. The magic scrying ball (glass?) would suggest with
eth0 up you've a default route set. On dailup via kppp you won't get a
default route to your ppp0 interface and therefore DNS lookups to the
world outside never reach there.

This is how it should look lie with both eth0 and ppp0 (kppp) up (I cut
out three columns which are unimportant):

I've two private networks, real ethernet as 10.10.10.0 and
vmware virtual host as 172.16.57.0. The "0" at the end suggests and a
genmask of 255.255.255.0 proves that these are networks, i.e. not a
single host but all hosts 10.10.10.x with 1<x<255 (zero is broadcast
address to all). If you look at the flags "H" means this is only one
single host, "G" means this is a gateway.

The last line is the default routing, i.e. if no other routing rule
applies all remaining traffic this way. The way is interface ppp0 and
the target the gateway IP 62.104.218.38, our remote host on the other
end of the modem line (see first line).

Now I'm pretty sure that in your case there is a line like:

0.0.0.0 [some IP] 0.0.0.0 UG eth0

If this is the case kppp will not touch it and if you would have looked
carefully in your /var/log/messages (or kppp's log) you would have found
an error telling you this.

If I guessed right run (as root):

route del default

then start kppp's dialin

After that figure out why RedHat sets a default route (I'm with the
lizard and without hats).

If I did not guess right you oviously didn't give enough information....

Red Hat Linux Install issues

I am having a peculiar problem with the Red Hat 9 installation. I am trying
to install it on a IBM thinkpad 1721 laptop with a formatted hard drive. The
laptop has a combo floppy/CD ROM drive. The laptop seems to be seeing the CD
ROM dirve but it is not able to read anything off it. The laptop has a
PCMCIA network adapter card which I used to connect to my home networking.
The other laptop on the home networking has Win 2000 running on it. Here are
the following waya I tried to install Linux -

1. I created a Linux boot disk using the pcmcia.img and booted the IBM
laptop and selected NFS install. On the other laptop I copied all the Red
Hat folders from the 3 installation CDs. I selected "Automatic DNS
configuration" to configure the DNS names for the IBM machine. For the NFS
server name I typed in the name (which did not have a domain name since I
log into a workgroup and not a domain) and typed in the actual directory of
the Redhat parent folder (d:\redhat9). But I get an error that the drive
could not be mounted.

Then I grabbed a Freeware called NFSClientServer and installed it on the Win
200 laptop. Here I exported the RedHat directory (d:\RedHat9\RedHat). Then I
followed the above steps on the IBM machine for NFS installation. Even
though my requests form the IBM machine seemed to log in the Server log on
the Win 2000 machine, I still could not mount the directory. What am I
missing?

2. Failing the above attempt, I attached a SCSI CD ROM to my IBM machine.
Then I made a boot disk using the bootdisk.img. After booting the IBM, I
selected "local CDROM" for the source, but I kept getting the message "No
software found in CDROM". Obvously, Linux was not seeing my SCSI CDROM, but
since it detected my internal (failed) CDROM, and could not read off of it,
it was giving me the message. How do I make it look at my SCSI CDROM?

I even tried making a boot disk using the "drvblock.img" file, but for some
reason when I use the disk, I get the message " No operation system found".
When I look at the disk contents the, it seems like the format information
on the disk is lost and Windows explorer asks me if I "want to format the
disk"? I even tried the same using Linux 7.3 (Red Hat), same error.

Please help.

Regards,
A Wexed Linux Installer.

[Mike]
OK - your best bet would be a HD install.
If you have copied the folders over you have enough HD space.

In w2k make a directory to hold the iso images
In turn copy the cds to this directory (not the contents - I think
Nero should be able to do this)
You should then have three files in this directory, all ending in
.iso

Now boot using your boot.img disk.
When you get get prompted for installation type, choose HD
then select the right partition where there are held (probably
/dev/hda1 on your system if you choose the first partition)
then select the directory you have placed the .iso files in.

Then you should be good to go.

pam and ssh

Try as I might, I am unable to figure out just what to do to allow a trusted
user on a trusted host to use 'scp' to copy files from one system to another
WITHOUT a password prompt. We WANT to do this in order to use 'scp' in
scripts initiated by CRON. We NEED to do this because 'rcp' gives us 'file
too large' responses. I have tried modifying /etc/pam.d/sshd (at least to
the limits of my understanding). I can make scp NOT work at all, or require
the password, but I cannot make it work without the password. Changing the
/etc/ssh/sshd_config file doesn't make any difference, that I can see, even
though that file now says 'go ahead and use the rhosts files'.

Can someone help me? Anyone? I would offer a carrot, like "I'll subscribe
to LJ", but I already do. I would offer virtual hugs and kisses, but the
respondent might be male, in which case an old homophobe like me is going to
have a problem. How about "undying gratitude"? Yeah, that's the ticket ...
it's easy, it's cheap, I could even teach my kids to sing appropriate
praises .. yeah, that's it .... Where's Jon Lovitz when you really need him?

Lou Lohman

Don't just BELIEVE!! Consume information like a starving person, and then sort it out for yourself.

And we know he reads ask-the-gang.html, he gave us explicit permission
to publish the whole thread just like we ask for
Now if we could get
people to remember to turn off HTML in their email...
-- Heather

[Thomas]
You need to run "scp" with the "-B" flag, ie.

scp -B files thomas@thomas

Batchmode doesn't require password authentication. You can also add this
in /etc/ssh_config as...

BatchMode=yes

that way, you don't have to pass the -B switch each time.

[Mike]
You can also exchange keys from one user/machine to the other. If you
want to copy from machine A to machine B. On machine A, as the user that
needs to copy, run ssh-keygen -t dsa. This will generate the key pair.
Then he'll need to copy the contents of ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub from machine A
into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on machine B. Then copying from machine A
to machine B won't require a password for this user. Do the reverse to
copy from B to A.

Pctel modem ................NO CARRIER..........?????

I have some problems trying to connect with my HSP Pctel Micromodem 56.I have
RedHat 9 installed and I use kppp for conneting to the net.When I try to
connect the handshake goes on well and all of a sudden I get this "No
Carrier" message.Can you tell what causes this error and what is the
solution.............please sugget an alternative driver if available.At
present I am using the Pctel drivers available at www.linmodems.org version
0.9.6 . Can any special AT command string help?????? If yes please suggest a
solution.Or using any other dialer will help????

Thanks in advance.

Vivek.

[K.-H.]
no carrier means the modem is unable to detect the carrier frequency onto
which data would be encoded. As this is a fatal problem it hangs up and tells
you "no carrier".

Why is the carrier gone? difficult to tell from here. What do your logfiles
say? kppp has a log button, use it!

At exactly what point of connection negotiation does the error occur? Do
you get the "connect" in the log window? Then the dialing is finished and
control passed to pppd -- which logs it's messages in /var/log/messages or
some such place. Go look for it. You can pass additional option to pppd in
kppp: add "debug". Make sure to press the add button in the kppp window so
the new option is actually used (should show up in the lower larger window).

Which VT? Custom prompts.

Here's a suggestion for your 2 cent tips section - I hope you like it.

When working with Linux servers I don't run X, preferring to make use
of the virtual terminals via Alt-F1, Alt-F2, Alt-F3 etc. The problem is
knowing which screen I am looking at, so I have devised a custom
prompt by including the following two lines in my .profile:

TTY=`basename \`tty\"
export PS1="[$TTY] \w$ "

Cool

The first line sets the environment variable TTY to the number of the
current virtual terminal, the second sets my prompt to show that number
and the current working directory as in this example:

[2] /etc/xinetd.d$

That's it!

Toby Poynder
London, UK

I must admit that I often find just typing in "tty" is more efficient than
having it set in one's $PS1 prompt.
-- Thomas

Cool toy of the week: XaoS

If that isn't enough to get you to run out and download it, you're probably
not the kind of person who would enjoy it.

[Ben]
And don't forget to take a look at the sample fractals that come with
the "xaos" package, located (under Debian) in /usr/share/XaoS/examples.
(I've got all of these converted to JPGs and use them as
randomly-selected desktop backgrounds.) Beautiful.

[Faber]
Yes, a very nice toy, but I still miss Fractint for DOS. The X/Windows
version had all the features, but just doesn't cut it somehow. A
Mandelbrot set not being full screen looses something, not to mention
they're slower than the DOS version.

I also had an internal IBM program[1] that would map out different phase
space maps stereographically, looking like some of the maps in the
Discrete screen saver in xscreensaver.. Man that was a fun toy; I wish I
could find the source code (it was floating around here on disk years
ago); I'd try to port that to Linux.

[1] For those of you that don't know it, IBM has a a mini Internet in
place with their own version of "free software", to wit programs written
by Beamers and distributed to other Beamers for fun and collective
profit. And since some of those people had multiple PhDs and worked on
esoteric stuff, some interesting programs cropped up. It's the only
thing I miss from my IBM days.